UK Girls BMX Jam Winter '05
Thornaby
6th of March 2005

The jam had been announced some time ago on BMinX.com and on WOFBMX.com, so I decided to meet some of the English female riders. In my quest, I took along the very motivated Julie who had travelled all the way from Paris and crashed at mine in Nottingham for the week end.
On Sunday the 6th, after loading the car early in the morning, we're off to meet up with the jam organizer Hazel. After half an hour waiting at the wrong meeting point, we eventually find Hazel and her brother and go on our way to Hanger 2, Thornaby's park, up north. We arrive at destination right at the opening time, and we can therefore take some time to inspect the park and to eat some hot dogs while watching Hazel warming up on the modules. The ladies start arriving and we're finally 8-9 to ride, and...4 French!! I knew Froggies tended to invade England, but I've never thought this trend was also true in BMX! Here's a summary of what I could see during this jam:

Hazel is amazing: double peg grind, feeble, etc, and above all, this wall tap she's spent a good part of the jam working on to finally land it.
Jade, Middlesborough local, has a very smooth riding, very...feminine? Yeah, I think that's the word. But I've also seen her working fiercely on some wall taps and manuals on quarters.
Liz spent a good amount of time on the volcano and working on some double peg grinds. She's very motivated and it's somehow communicative (is this word really exist?).
Sam was pretty surprised to see some flatlanders, obviously, girl flatlanders are not that frequent in England. After fixing a crank problem, she put her helmet decorated by a "I love my BMX" sticker on, got on her bike with blinking valve cap (!!) and showed us some clean fakies and rollbacks.
Christelle is French and lives in Newcastle. She has recently joined the fabulous world of BMXing: "I've never thought I would one day buy that kind of tiny kiddy bike" We're all on the same boat...With a "Girl kick ass" sticker on her bars, she went riding the mini and practicing some fakies and rollbacks thanks to Sam's advices.

Julie had travelled far to intend the jam, and she really wanted to make the most of it, I've seen her a bit everywhere in the park, and especially on the volcano, the small fun box, and on this wall that apparently everyone wants to tap, but Darling, you still need to fight to take those wheels off the wall! (bad translation of a French slang I've just learnt!).
I've also noticed a sweet blond girl, a bit shy, watching everyone with interest and borrowing a bike from time to time, a new recruit?
Marie drove from London, that is 8 hours return, to make the jam, and I therefore felt a bit less like the lonely flatlander! Apart from hiding behind or on top of the various modules to take some pictures, she showed us some nice BW and FW steamrollers and practiced with me some mccircles. Unfortunately, there was barely some room to ride flatland with the modules everywhere, the riders passing through, the bikes thrown randomly around, etc. Furthermore, after Jay Forde demo, many street riders got converted to flatland and we could witness many hang5 attempts a bit everywhere! A local kid also got infected by the flatland virus and decided to become a tanless Jay Forde when he'll grow up, so he started practicing on some fork glides and he took him a while before realising that the 5m2 "allocated" to flatland were also to share with us!

I have to say I didn't know what to expect about this jam, maybe something a bit more "official", because it was more of a meeting between friends, the kind "hey, get your ass down to the park this week end", and it was actually a very good thing. And after all, what more do you want? you get to move around, to meet friendly people, to ride with very motivated ladies and to discover a new scene, all good vibe. So what's more? Well, bring on the next one!
And I've actually heard of some plans for this summer: Julie, Sam and Christelle would go on a road trip in France, and there's the Rid2z event on the 13th and 14th of August in Montpellier, so come over people, we need more girls intending the comp, whatever their level and guys are welcome...as cheerleaders ;-) !!

Thanks to Hazel for this jam, to all the girls that showed up, and to Julie for coming over and for bringing me some French biscuits and the last Soul magazine!

Sorry about this translation, I'm more used to write up reports on microbiology than on bmx, and sorry for those who may be annoyed by the extensive use of the word "girl", I do know that from a certain age you're more of a lady than of a girl, but eh? I like to think I'm still an irresponsible kid!

-Caro